Darn you, Nutella, I'm a yuppie after all

I've been a peanut butter man for some time now.

Peanut butter on toast. Peanut butter on bagels. Peanut butter on bananas. Or apples. Or pickles, if I'm feeling wild.

It's a respectable spread. Hearty. Salty (and/or sweet, depending on the type you buy). And high on both protein and unsaturated (good) fats. It's a working man's spread, yet still acceptable and enjoyable for the college-educated crowd.

But -- there's always a "but" -- I've discovered a new love. There's another jar in the cabinet, right beside the peanut butter. Sometimes sitting on top of it, even.

This chocolatey, creamy, "spreadably delicious" stuff called Nutella.

Up until two weeks ago, I had only heard talk of a hazelnut-based goop that was apparently quite popular among Euro-snobs, who thought themselves too classy for lesser, legume-based spreads.

And I dismissed it as superfluous to my edible spread needs. It sounded unappetizing, expensive, perhaps even un-American.

But on a recent spring day -- giddy with weekend recreation and forgetful of my prior conclusions, drawn years earlier -- Meaghan and I bought a jar. One harmless 13-ounce jar (371 grams). It was not terribly expensive, and we were shopping at an all-natural, organic food store, so we were feeling rather hippie-dippy already.

I figured Meaghan would try it and occasionally labor to find something to spread it on as the jar collected dust over six months in our cupboard.

I. Was. Wrong.

It was I who tore the seal off the jar's top. It was I who first spread it onto a bagel in our kitchen.

I introduced our toast to the stuff. I dipped a graham cracker stick into the jar and scooped up a blob to place on my forked tongue.

It has been I who has devoured nearly all of the one-third of a jar (4 ounces, give or take) that has already vanished.

So with this it has become clear to me: As if driving a Corolla weren't sign enough, or I couldn't discern this from the fact that I write for a website subscribed to by investment bankers, or from my taking my dogs on vacation with me ---

Plainly, despite my better judgment, I have become a yuppie.

I fear I am doomed to a lifetime of penance -- taking on home improvement projects at which I am neither skilled nor experienced -- to try to preserve some allegiance to my working class roots.

And I promise, peanut butter, I have not altogether forgotten you. Perhaps this is just a fling, and this will be the last Nutella jar with which you'll ever have to share cabinet space. Or, at worst, I will soon return you to your rightful prominence in the spread corner, sitting either in front of or on top of that squatty, white-topped container.

Either way, I will not become a Euro-snob. (But they sure are smart for driving so many small, diesel-powered cars.)

My conscience(s)

The voices in my head have become louder lately. Or other things around me have gotten quieter.

Either way, the point is I have become more aware recently of the personalities that embody my conscience. What I mean is: the people who cross my mind when I'm taking some action or making some decision of which they would or would not be proud.

For example, Mickey is my latest environmental conscience. Both in his blog and in person, he often preaches the gospel of environmental responsibility, whether it be through using less gasoline to reduce emissions or fighting the waste of bottled water.

So now, when I do or don't recycle something, or I do or don't use those anti-Earth plastic bags at the grocery store checkout, I briefly imagine Mickey's approval or disapproval. I actually confessed this to him over the weekend. May he not abuse this power.

But, lest he suffer an enlarged ego, I'll tell you that Mickey is not the only voice in my head. In fact, he's not even the only environmental conscience up there.

I'm still occasionally haunted by an incident during my freshman year of college, in which I was emptying out a semester's worth of class notes into a trash can. An upperclassman in the room with me glared up from the paper he was studying to chide, "Do you have something against recycling?" I murmured something about there being multi-colored paper in my notebook and the recycling box calling for white paper only. But he won, and I recycled it anyway. (I don't recall whether I sorted out the colored paper or just disregarded the label on the recycling bin.)

The internal prodding of other people's expectations extends beyond environmental responsibility. I'm sure I've mentioned before that my dad is a Baptist minister, and so he remains the voice in my head related to minor issues of morality -- e.g. profanity, lewd TV shows and movies, etc. Actually, he's more like a look of disapproval in my head than a voice; that's more his style.

Luckily, he's always been a reasonable guy and not too prudish, so I don't have to feel guilty every time I watch Family Guy. (Hi Dad. I love you. You're not supposed to be reading my blog :) )

There are other voices, I'm sure, but these are my major ones. I suppose Meaghan could be one in some cases; for example if I wash the dishes because I don't want her to get mad about having to do them all the time. That's kind of different, though, because hers would be an actual voice in my ear in that case, not an imagined one in my mind. Plus, I generally just do the dishes and other household tasks because I want my house to be clean almost as much as she wants it. (Seriously, she's not a nag and I try not to give her any reason to be.)

I hope all of this doesn't mean I'm too easily influenced by the people around me -- or at least that I'm only influenced by positive messages with which I'm already inclined to agree. As of yet, there are no voices in my head advocating violence, anarchy, drug abuse and the like (well, maybe a little anarchy). I hope to keep it that way.

So 'fess up readers, who are the voices of your conscience and what do they tell you to do (or not do)?

What's in my FBI file

I am not now, nor have I ever been, a card-carrying member of the Communist Party. I haven't even had a socialist-leaning work of fiction published, so I doubt Sen. McCarthy would bother calling me to testify before Congress if he were still alive and still conducting his famed hearings.

Nevertheless, I wonder if the FBI keeps a file on me and, if so, what they've got in there. A list of books I've checked out from the library, maybe? I have read a lot of public copies of John Steinbeck novels, so that might nominate me for some sort of red-scare watchlist, if such a thing still exists.

But, no, I suspect the FBI has moved on to focus on other kinds of affiliations these days -- potential links to Islamic terrorism mostly. My world religion professor in college was about the closest I've ever come to interacting with a Muslim of Middle Eastern descent. And if this guy was a radical, he certainly hid it well.

So the logical conclusion is: the FBI guy assigned to fill my file is probably bored to the point of playing Family Feud online. (Go ahead. Just one game. I'll wait.) Even this blog -- though providing possible insight into my political leanings -- is so "maddeningly infrequent," as one dear reader put it, that it could hardly keep the junior intelligence gatherer (or whatever they call themselves) busy.

Well, I'm feeling generous, so I'm going to suggest some possible additions to my file. I'm not saying they'll be easy to obtain, but at least this will give the guy something to do:

1. A handwriting sample. I hear you can tell a lot about someone's personality through careful analysis of his or her handwriting. I'll go ahead and give you the summary for mine -- there's plainly some sick stuff going on in my head that even I am unaware of. Seriously, my scribbles look less and less like the modern English alphabet every time I write. Maybe I'm reverting to some earlier form of writing, through knowledge passed genetically down from my Anglo ancestors. Does it work that way?

2. The April Fools editions of my college newspaper. As many of my readers (who were fellow college newspaper staff members) can confirm, nothing reveals my twisted psyche quite like this annual gag edition of the student paper that we produced. Part of the tradition involved creating a crude, cardboard/paper replica of some building on campus and then setting fire to it for a front page April Fools photo (or photo montage, in some cases). Ah, good times.

3. The detailed diary I've been keeping about planning a hypothetical revolution. It's got a lot of names, phone numbers, schematics. I'm just saying, might be interesting reading.

4. A print of one of the Dogs Playing Poker paintings. I don't know what this would tell the FBI about me. I just think it would be a cool thing to have in my file. I think I like Bold Bluff best.

5. A photo of me. Not because I'm vain, just that it seems like a standard item to have on file. But give me a little credit and don't use any of those from the college yearbook. They made me look so pale. All right, fine, I'll give you one. My friend caught me off guard while I was working out, so it's a little embarrassing, but at least you'll know what I look like.

I'm sure there's plenty more to dig up on me, but this should be a good start.

By the way, can I get a copy of the file, just for fun?

Senility sets in

Maybe it's silly of me to share bizarre news that I read and comment on it, since you all are probably reading the same things already. But here again, I can't help myself.

Ted Turner got all Nostradamus on us in an interview published in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution today.

His great prediction for the future: The fallout of global warming will lead to most of the human population being cannibals in 30 to 40 years.

I laughed at first when I read the headline, but then I thought, "No, no. Ted is a bright guy. Reasonable and well-grounded. He must know what he's talking about."

He even said himself (in this same article): "I've gotten a lot better... It's been a long time since anybody caught me saying something stupid."

Good gravy, the reporter must have wet his pants when Turner said that. Really? A "long time"? Cause you just said... oh never mind. Thanks for taking my call, Ted.

Apparently, Ted's thorough scientific research (all performed inside his own rectum) has revealed that unchecked global warming will cause a worldwide temperature rise of 8 degrees in 30 to 40 years. Because of this, crops will cease to grow, governments will collapse, and the few surviving humans will have resorted to eating each other for lack of any other food source. (He's even produced a video about the grim future.)

Geez. There is so much that we non-billionaires don't know about the world.

Thanks, Ted, for sharing your wealth of knowledge. (Read the full article, if you haven't had enough.)

Perhaps the most important lesson I learned today, thanks to a commenter on this AJC article, was what it means to get RickRoll'd. Some of you just learned that, too. I promise I won't do it again.

Well, I don't promise, but I'll try to refrain.

A four-letter word for impartial? Anybody?

I've only recently taken an interest in crossword puzzles. Up until the last year or two, I never particularly enjoyed them, probably because I was very bad at them, probably because I had never done them before, which was (you guessed it) probably because I never particularly enjoyed them.

But that has all changed of late, as I've taken up routinely attempting the puzzle in my hometown newspaper. And I find it rather stimulating (mentally, perverts). It may be because I have become old and boring, or...

No, I'm confident that's it. No need speculating on other possible reasons.

The trouble is, I'm still fairly bad at the puzzles. I consider myself moderately well educated. But apparently I have a below-average ability to memorize intellectual trivia, which seems to be the sort of knowledge required for crossword puzzle proficiency.

In the puzzles that I frequent, the clues often relate to literature, classical music, movies, historical figures, geography, foreign languages, and so on. There are also vocabulary-related clues, which tend to be the ones I fill in first.

Notwithstanding my weakness, I attempt to solve these puzzles. It gives me something to do while eating breakfast and/or sitting on the porcelain throne. (You may recall this doozy of post, which inspired a lengthier discussion of toilet-time activities among my readers.)

Occasionally, I will actually finish an entire puzzle, sometimes with Meaghan's help, other times with Mr. Webster's or Mr. Wikipedia's help. Once every blue waning moon, I'll solve a whole puzzle all by myself.

On my best day, I doubt I've ever finished a puzzle in less than 20 minutes.

So you can imagine my disgust at reading about this guy, 23-year-old Tyler Hinman, the four-time American Crossword Puzzle Tournament champion, who routinely works the New York Times puzzle in less than five minutes. Watch him go.

Notice in the video the camera doesn't zoom in close enough to actually read the puzzle. He's probably not even writing real words, just scribbling on the page.

Ah well, he's given me something to aspire to. If I study late enough and train hard enough and do enough mental wind-sprints, I too one day can finish a puzzle in less time than it takes me to eat a piece of toast.

I don't know, then, what I'll do while eating my second piece of toast, but I can figure that out when the day comes. Maybe I'll take up the Celebrity Cipher.

A bunch of musical geniuses

I was pleased (and maybe surprised, I forget) at how well my handful of readers did on the song lyrics contest. Only two of the 10 lines totally stumped you, and I kind of thought they might.

It was a close contest (if Jacob is to be believed about having known five answers, after he read Courtney's responses) but ultimately Courtney was the big winner, swooping in with 5.5 correct responses only about an hour after the post went live. (The 0.5 is for a correct artist in Everclear but the wrong song title. It should have been "Santa Monica," which Jacob professes to have been his personal theme song during high school.)

I kind of thought Jacob would be the one to guess #2 and #4 correctly, since they both fall into the old-time country category that he and I have boldly admitted to enjoying. Alas, he did not.

The answer for #2 should be "Flowers on the Wall," originally recorded by the Statler Brother, but later covered by a long list of folks, including Johnny Cash and young whipper-snapper Eric Heatherly, who scored a #6 on the country charts with it in 2000. Allegedly the song also makes an appearance in the movie "Pulp Fiction," which I have never seen.

The other stumper, #4, was Willie Nelson's "Me and Paul," written by Willie about his time on the road with drummer Paul English (or so the Internets tell me). Meaghan did correctly guess this as Willie Nelson song, so I guess it was only a half-stumper. She was also right in thinking the song was about being "on the road," so maybe she should get three-quarters of a point for this. But in a contest with no tangible prize, is it really worth the debate?

My apologies to Julie for designing a contest so unreasonably stacked against her personal abilities and knowledge base. Perhaps next time we'll do fill-in-the-blank song lyrics.

So, in case any doubts or confusion remain, here is the full answer key:

1. "I wish I was like you, easily amused" -- Nirvana, All Apologies

2. "Playing Solitaire till dawn with a deck of 51, smoking cigarettes and watching Captain Kangaroo, so don't tell me I've nothing to do" -- Statler Brothers (and many others), Flowers on the Wall

3. "I need a photo opportunity. I want a shot at redemption. Don't want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard" -- Paul Simon, You Can Call Me Al -- (and yes, Courtney, it is a great song)

4. "It's been rough and rocky travelin' but I'm finally standing upright on the ground. And after takin' several readings, I'm surprised to find my mind still fairly sound." -- Willie Nelson, Me and Paul

5. "You, I thought I knew you. You, I cannot judge." -- REM, Nightswimming

6. "We can live beside the ocean, leave the fire behind, swim out past the breakers, watch the world die." -- Everclear, Santa Monica

7. "And the reaching of the steeple felt like one more expensive ad for something cheap. This was not the way it looked on the billboard, smiling family beaming down on the interstate." (sorry, this is totally self-indulgent. only one of you will know it.) -- Caedmon's Call, Expectations -- (and yes, Meaghan was the one I expected to know it)

8. "So shave your face with some mace in the dark. Savin' all your food stamps and burnin' down the trailer park." -- Beck, Loser

9. "Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book? It took me years to write. Will you take a look?" -- Beatles, Paperback Writer

10. "I don't cry when my dog runs away. I don't get angry at the bills I have to pay. I don't get angry when my mom smokes pot." -- Sublime, What I Got

To avoid this crowd's harsh judgment (or that of my legions of silent readers), I'll clarify that these are not my favorite songs, just some songs that periodically pop into my head. Meaghan asked why I did not include any Jack Johnson, whom I listen to more frequently than any of the above. Good question, and I don't know (other than the suspicion that no one would have known the answer).

In some cases, I had to look up the titles myself before assembling the contest. Is that wholly unfair or what?

Either way, thanks for playing.